Literature Majors Seminar
Term 2
Th, 9:30-11:30 a.m.
To the huddled masses of the nineteenth-century cities of western Europe and North America, the suburbs offered an idyllic dream of leisure, nature, and clean air. To the rebellious teens of the 1950s and 1960s, in contrast, the suburbs had become an object of mockery, even of hatred: a sociocultural cage to be escaped. At the same time, other kinds of suburban spaces were emerging, such as the banlieues of Paris, the ever-expanding ring roads of Shanghai, the townships and “security suburbs” of Johannesburg, and the exurbs of America. This seminar explores the history of these transitions, from the 1810s to the present, and examines their significance, through a consideration of fiction, poetry, film, music, and journalism from and about the suburbs, from the 1810s to the present. Writers/ creators studied will range from John Keats and Zadie Smith to Mike Nichols and Sam Mendes, The Doors, N.W.A., and Arcade Fire.
